3D Printed Abstract Sculptures Explore Identity In The Virtual Age

These days we have multiple identities, some of them strewn across all manner of social media sites as well as the one(s) we have to live with in the physical world. As virtual practices evolve and augmented reality plays an increasingly bigger part in our lives, our identities are going to mutate even further—the physical and virtual worlds will merge and we’ll be left with ever more complex representations of ourselves.

Exploring the way our identity has become more mutable and less defined in this virtualized age is John Rainey, with his sculptural objects that look at how representation has changed in a time of social media and the internet.

Rainey uses people’s Facebook profiles along with royal portraits to create sculptures, similar to the classic sculptural form of the bust, but distorted through software to create a representation of ourselves that’s caught between the digital and the physical. The result is strange hybrid forms that represent an “exploration of images, reproduction and how identity is transferred across different media”.

The sculptures are created using a mix of traditional and modern processes so 3D printing, laser cut perspex, and plaster are mixed together, much like the identities that the materials are exploring.

Proposal 1, Computer Augmented Portrait (Series), Laser cut live edge Perspex

Proposal 2, Computer Augmented Portrait (Series), Z Corp print

Proposal 3, Computer Augmented Portrait (Series), Laser cut live edge Perspex & Z Corp print

Proposal 4, Computer Augmented Portrait (Series), Z Corp Print

A Royal Portrait, I’ll reconstruct you instead… (Series), Plaster

Royal Portrait of a Facebook User, I’ll reconstruct you instead… (Series), Plaster

The Assumption of Pretense, Insurgence (Series)

The Departure of Substance, Insurgence (Series)

The Massacre of Definition, Insurgence (Series)

Observation of Aggression

[via Lancia TrendVisions]

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